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Tokyo's Burning

What if history had a human face? This CD is an attempt to amplify the human voices of those who lived through WWII and help them to sing history to us. The CD is a narrative journey that sings us from the farmlands of Kansas to the firebombing of Tokyo.

Genre: Folk: Folk Blues

Release Date: 2012

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ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

Tokyo’s Burning is a CD that tells history from the inside, telling stories of the Pacific theater of WWII not from the God’s eye view but from the points of view of American and Japanese civilians and soldiers who lived and suffered through Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima, the firebombing of Tokyo and the atom bomb drop on Hiroshima. Song in the CD are based upon 15 years of research into the Pacific theater of WWII by Tony Barnstone—poet, author, and professor at Whittier College in Los Angeles. Tony worked with oral histories, histories, diaries, letters, and memoirs, and did his own interviews with vets and their families to write a book of poems titled Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki (BKMK Press, 2009). Though many of the songs deal with atrocity—sex slavery, torture, internment camps, even cannibalism—the CD itself is meant to take a neutral stance, allowing each character to speak his or her view, without judgment, assuming that the readers will find their own moral paths through these competing voices and viewpoints. As one character says, “Seems everyone has a point of view, but no one has perspective.”

L.A.-based songwriters John Clinebell and Ariana Hall, who work together under the name Genuine Brandish, were commissioned by Tony to work with him to translate his book into an album of 15 songs (with the essential help of producer Andrew Bush). What if history had a human face? What if the people who lived history could speak to it? This CD is an attempt to amplify the smaller voices, the human voices, of those who lived through the war and help them to sing history to us.